One of the biggest mistakes employers make when it comes to employee training and learning is taking a hands-off approach to training.

An example of the hands-off approach would be a manager not taking an active part in his/her employees’ development, leaving it entirely to the instructor or the online content.

Another mistake is not providing any kind of follow-up or reinforcement that helps the employee apply the training to his/her job.

For example, how many times have you gone to a seminar, become really excited about what you learned and looked forward to applying it in your job? But when you got back to work nothing changed—it was the same old stuff. It’s almost like there were barriers in place preventing you from using your new skills and training that you were so excited about the day before.

When this happens, it’s proof that there’s no support for employee training. There’s no help removing some of the barriers. There’s no one sharing the employee’s excitement.

OK, then what should supervisors remember or do so that employee training and learning is a valuable experience and one that gives employers a return on their investment?

1. Prepare the employee for the experience so that they can be successful. Explain what is expected. You might want to say something such as, “Pay particular attention to these three key areas.” That way, the employee’s focus and attention will be heightened in those areas. You may want to emphasize that these are the skills you will be using when you’re back on the job, etc.
2. Reflect on the opportunities that the employee might benefit from once the training is completed. For example, perhaps they will be leading a meeting or using a new software application. This way, the employee will be anticipating and looking ahead before the training even begins.
3. Help the employee understand what’s in it for them. Describe how this training will benefit them or help them in their daily job responsibilities. Detail how things will be better, different or easier after they complete the training.
4. Make sure the employee understands how to minimize interruptions. Cell phones and BlackBerries should not be going off, etc. Employees should be aware that they are expected to make alternative arrangements for taking calls and messages during breaks, lunch, etc.
5. Arrange the employee’s schedule so that others will handle his or her responsibilities while in training. Reassign or reschedule work assignments. These actions send the message to the employee that this training is very important to the boss or supervisor, as well.
6. Schedule follow-up discussions and adopt a hands-on approach. Managers, too, should take an active role in the employees’ development. Employee learning does not happen in a vacuum. Ask the employee about those previously discussed key areas and what he or she learned. You want to reinforce what the employee learned so they understand how to apply the training to the job.
7. Make plans and set expectations so that the trained employee immediately puts their new knowledge or skills to work. Assign a task and ask the employee to produce the results.
8. Celebrate! Acknowledge the employee’s progress and recognize the progress that the employee is making.

I find that more and more businesses are looking for ways to develop their people. And as we move into an unchartered new economy, one in which businesses are faced with having to scale back, but still keep the volume of work going—it’s very important that employees continue strengthening skills and/or developing new ones.

And employers should ensure that they are prepared to support employees so that the business can accomplish what is necessary. 

In my last Insight, I talked about new managers and explained that good management skills are necessary for their success. 

When helping your new managers to be good at their jobs, you need to: 

• Give your new managers as much information as possible—Inform them what their new responsibilities will be, what their new roles will be, tell them what you expect of them and find out what they expect from you. Tell them what the goals for their departments are and what the priorities and goals of the company are. Help your new managers determine how their departments fit into the company as a whole.
  
  
• Help your new managers build a network—Encourage your new managers to build a network by talking to other managers. Encourage them to have an open dialogue and discuss: what the other managers do in their departments, how they get things done and how their department links to other departments.
  
  Also, encourage your new managers to find additional resources, such as people inside or outside your organization who could answer questions for them. The HR department is a good base for your new managers to have in their network.
  
  
• Facilitate good management skills training—Your new managers need to have a fundamental foundation of management skills that can help them accomplish results through the people they will be managing. 

There are three good management skills all your new managers should have: 

• Authenticity—They need to be authentic, honest, provide honest opinions, act with integrity, be trustworthy and promote trust and sharing in the groups they manage. They also need to share information appropriately without “sugarcoating.”
  
  
• The ability to bring out the best in people—Managers need to be able to bring out the best in the people they manage because, ultimately, the manager’s success is going to depend on the successes of the people who work for them.
  
  Managers need to make sure that they set clear expectations with their employees for work assignments and workplace behaviors. Also, provide continuous feedback to your new managers so they know how they’re doing and if they have areas that need improvement.
  
  Another way for your new managers to bring out the best in people is for them to provide access to training for the employees they manage.
  
  
• Reception to feedback—This means new managers should not only be open to receiving feedback on their performance, but should also thoughtfully consider the feedback given to them and choose how to best act on it. 

An Example

I once worked with a warehouse company. There were several people who were really good at their jobs—the packaging people, the inventory person, the person on the receiving end. These folks were promoted to supervisory positions. 

Unfortunately, these people were plopped into their new supervisory positions with the expectation that they would now manage their former co-workers; it was a really difficult transition for them. These employees were willing to make the transition, but were looking for help to make sure they transitioned successfully. 

My approach focused on giving these new managers really good management skills so they could be successful from day one. 

The company’s HR specialist was a key player in making this transition happen. She provided the new managers with the information they needed (policies, procedures, etc.).  She created job descriptions so that the managers knew what was expected of them in their new positions and what was expected of the people and jobs they supervised. 

After the new managers worked with the HR specialist, I then helped them enlarge their network so they didn’t have to be a “lone ranger.” This network included people the managers could turn to for advice, coaching, guidance and feedback. 

With the HR specialist, I also helped institute formal classes to build the new managers’ skills in coaching, giving feedback, setting expectations for employees and managing performance. 

It took about nine months to complete the entire transition, which may seem like a long time, but at the end of the program, the managers were more positive and enthusiastic. Turnover decreased significantly and employee performance started improving. 

That’s why it’s so important for all managers—but especially new managers—to get the training they need to develop good management skills.

Last month you were a top performing employee in your company—this month you’re a manager. Like so many new managers, you’ve probably discovered that what made you a successful employee doesn’t necessarily make you a successful or effective manager. I see some common mistakes with people who are new to a managerial role. Here are three I’ve seen most often.  

Common Mistakes

Mistake #1: The company doesn’t give the new manager the skills necessary to do the job. Somebody who has been in a technical position and gets promoted into a manager or team leadership role needs to develop some good management skills.

When companies don’t give new managers an opportunity to learn good management skills, that new manager will fall back into his or her comfort zones. And the comfort zone is usually the technical skills because that’s what has made him/her successful up to this point. The new manager focuses more on the work than on the people who are helping get the work done (the employees). Without good management skills, the new manager may ignore or mishandle the people-part of the job and end up with bigger problems. 

Mistake #2: The manager doesn’t separate friendship and work. Another mistake made by new managers is continuing to be friends with their former peers and allowing that friendship to cloud management actions and decisions.

For example, the new manager and former peer may still go out partying on the weekends or maybe they’ll continue to babysit each other’s children. What happens is the friendship now makes it difficult for the manager to address work issues objectively. 

Good managers make the split. They separate themselves from personal issues and focus on getting work done. 

I once worked with a manager who was in the position I just mentioned (being friends with one of her former peers). The former peer used to go to the now-manager’s house and wash her car and help her take care of her landscaping. 

The manager paid the former peer extra to do these personal tasks for her, but when it came down to managing the person’s work and counseling him when he wasn’t doing well, she found it very difficult because their personal relationship got in the way. 

Mistake #3: The manager becomes a “lone ranger.” One final mistake I often see is when new managers only pay attention to their own team, or their own department, and they don’t take the big picture into account. They fail to see how their group/department fits into what the company is trying to achieve as a whole.  

For example, a manager decided to have his team work on an improvement for handling a recurring customer problem. They came up with a great solution, but it caused new problems for other areas of the company and cost more money, which didn’t support the company’s goal of reducing operational expenses. 

In my next Insight, I’ll give some steps to take if you want to make sure all of your managers have good management skills.  

There are five characteristics of high team performance: results, commitment, process, communication and trust. In my last Insight, I discussed the mistakes that managers often make which can reduce his/her team’s performance. 

Here is an example of a company that successfully became a high-performing team: 

For the past 40 years, this family-owned retail store has catered to a niche market and is well-known in the local community. 

One of the goals of this company was to implement a more sophisticated software program that would integrate three things: accounting, inventory and point-of-sale. 

The company had been running separate programs for each task, and none of the programs communicated with the others. Having a fully-integrated system would be the expansion the company needed to move into a more sophisticated arena. 

As you can imagine, this task was pretty massive. It was going to be disruptive to the business. It was going to get in the way of their daily work in terms of sales, managing inventory and making sure that the books were balancing. All of these things still had to happen while the new software implementation was going on. 

Because of the potential for disruption and because the implementation was going to cross so many different functions within the business, there was a huge likelihood for pointing fingers and placing blame on others. 

The company pulled together a planning and implementation team with a manager from each department. The team was more of a task force team, which would be dissolved after the implementation period was complete. 

To start out, the team identified the results they needed to achieve, making sure that everybody was committed to those results. Part of the planning stage was being very clear about the importance of this piece of software to the continued growth of the business. That was key to getting people’s commitment to those goals. 

All of the team’s meetings were focused on results and the overall process. The meetings were also focused on the plan—how were they going to track their progress? What was the deadline? How would they continue the process throughout the project? 

Trust and communication were the underpinning of all of this. 

Before I came to work with the team, there had been a lack of communication because everyone was focused on their own functional areas. The team needed to avoid the potential for finger pointing and placing blame as they planned, tested and implemented the software project. So trust and communication were going to continue to be key. 

I worked with the team to improve communication skills. I taught them how to really listen and develop trustworthy behaviors. Once they had this training, what they accomplished in their meetings was very dynamic. 

As the team began working on the software project, lots of ideas were put on the table. Rather than being defensive, people were responding with, “Tell me more,” and really trying to understand the different ideas that were being put out there. Then once they had an understanding, they’d start analyzing the pros and cons of each idea to determine what was workable and what wasn’t. 

Along the way the team realized that one of the members was very quiet, but you could see his “wheels were turning.” He didn’t contribute much to the meetings, but when he did speak up, his thoughts were profound because he had really analyzed them internally. 

So the team learned that his style was to not speak until he was sure about what he was going to say. He didn’t think out loud; his thought process was completely internal. 

From this the team came to appreciate how different everyone on the team was and they began to value each other’s thoughtfulness and insights. 

It also helped them when it came time to ask questions about each idea, as team members were now less defensive and more open to different ideas and approaches. 

This team then helped increase the trust throughout the entire store by keeping in constant communication with everyone—the management team and the employees. The team included this as part of their process for integrating the new software system, that way there were no surprises and everyone was kept up-to-date. 

This software project team was clear on the results they had to achieve, they were committed to the work it would take to achieve that result and they established team processes to support the project. Their trust in each other, and the open communication among the team and the rest of the store staff, enabled them to be successful.

Results, commitment, processes, communication and trust are the five characteristics of high team performance. 

There are some common mistakes, however, that managers often make which can prevent high team performance from occurring: 

1. Unclear Goals or Results—Many times, managers assume that employees understand the overall goal of the team, but that’s not always true. So it’s really important for managers to spend a little bit of time asking employees to describe, in their own words, what they think the goal means and what it looks like.
   
   This will help verify that everyone is on the same page, because if everyone is going in different directions, it will be frustrating and chaotic, and the team won’t accomplish the results it needs to.
   
   
2. Not Fully Communicating—A manager needs to communicate completely with his/her team members. For example, a manager might not share enough information with the team, which could affect the team’s ability to get the desired results.
   
   For example, the work the team is doing may be dependent on what another team is doing. If communication isn’t clear—if the manager doesn’t keep employees up-to-date on, say, changes in processes—team members may start going down the wrong path, leading to frustration, rework or missed deadlines.
   
   Team managers are often privy to higher-level organizational information—changes in timelines, changes in deadlines or priorities—and so it’s really important for team managers to share this information with the team members in appropriate ways.
   
   
3. Punishing Team Members for Mistakes—Sometimes managers “punish” employees on their team when they make a mistake, rather than making sure up-front that the team has their ground rules and processes in place and that goals are clearly understood. Doing so can eliminate a lot of mistakes before they’re even made, or it could reduce the magnitude of the mistakes.
   
   Rather than punishing mistakes, look at them as an opportunity to coach for improvement in the way the team operates or, even better, involve the team in problem-solving. Ask, “How are we, as a team, going to prevent this or minimize the likelihood of it happening in the future?”
   
   
4. Not Providing Support—For example, not providing the resources the team needs, such as access to other people or access to a piece of software that will help get the job done. It could be making sure that people on the team are connected to other subject-matter experts. It could be backing up your team members by offering emotional, attitudinal or motivational support. Or it could be actual physical support in terms of taking on some task to enabling a team member to take on other tasks.
   
   
5. Breaking Trust—Trust can be broken when managers don’t follow through on promises and commitments. For example, saying, “I’ll get that for you,” or “I’ll make sure so-and-so knows about this,” or “Yes, I’ll make that call,” or “Yes, I’ll get you on my agenda.” But then not actually making those things happen. 

These mistakes can stop teams from performing at their highest level. 

In my next Insight, I’ll give an example of a time I helped a team achieve high performance. 

Results, commitment and processes are three of the five characteristics of high team performance, which I discussed in my last Insight. 

Here are the final two characteristics. 

• Communication—This is so much more important than just sharing information with your team, like I mentioned when I talked about processes in my last Insight. A high-performing team encourages, welcomes and supports a lot of different ideas. Even if the ideas sound a little crazy, even if the ideas sound a little bit—or a lot—unworkable. High-performing teams welcome ideas from every member on the team.
  
  It’s important to hear everyone out and not eliminate any ideas early on, and high-performing teams do this well. So communication is really being open to new ideas. It’s openness to people’s opinions. It’s welcoming and encouraging participation from every team member. 

Don’t overlook the quiet team members. If someone is hanging back, the team should look for ways to make the person more comfortable participating. A lot of times, those team members that hold back are thinking about and analyzing ideas. They often have incredibly valuable things to share that probably didn’t even occur to the rest of the team because they weren’t thinking that deeply.

The team also needs to have a thorough discussion, and analyze all ideas and suggestions, to identify the best ideas and which ones they want to move forward on. 

• Trust—This characteristic almost goes without saying. In order for a team to be effective and high-performing, each member needs to feel secure. Team members need to feel like it’s OK to ask for help. It’s OK to say, “I don’t know.” It’s OK to admit a mistake was made without fear of retaliation (or fear of any kind).
  
  In fact, on high-performing teams, mistakes are usually viewed as an opportunity to look at how things can be done better or more efficiently, and then create processes accordingly.
  
  If processes are in place, there won’t be many mistakes. And if people are committed to the results, following the processes and there’s open communication, trust just becomes one “ingredient” in the “recipe” for a high-performing team.
  
  High trust levels also make it easier to share all those wild and crazy ideas. It makes it OK and safe to voice your opinion or share feedback when someone has done something that might negatively impact the team, the relationships on the team or the results the team is trying to achieve. 

Team leaders and members are all responsible for making sure the five characteristics of high team performance are in place. The team leader is really the person who is going to drive this “train,” but each team member—through their commitment—needs to hold each other, and themselves, accountable.

High team-performance can serve to help employees regain the work-life balance they so desperately yearn for.

If you think back to high school, you’ll probably remember working on a group project at some point, maybe in a Social Studies or English class. Everyone had a different part of the project assigned to them, such as doing research, putting presentation materials together, or typing up final documents. Many times one of the people assigned to the project said they were going to do something, but then dragged their feet and didn’t get it done. So the other members of the group had to step in and do that person’s part.

Because of the one person who really wasn’t a high-performing team member, the rest of the group ended up working harder, working longer and taking on more of the load than they needed to.

I think this same thing happens in the workplace as well. Sometimes we are on a team that is not high performing and we end up covering the work of the under-performing team members. Being adults, employees don’t always want to run to their managers or supervisors and say, “Sally isn’t doing what she’s supposed to be doing,” because they don’t want to be seen as tattletales. Instead, a couple of the employees on the team pick up the tasks the under-performers’ were supposed to do and end up:

• Coming in early;
• Staying later;
• Taking work home;
• Getting resentful of the under-performers; and
• Getting stressed out;

All of which affects work-life balance.

There are five characteristics of high team-performance. It doesn’t matter what kind of a team you’re on, all team members need to have all five of these characteristics, otherwise you run into the “high school slacker” situation.

The five characteristics are:

1. Results—This is the number one characteristic of high team-performance. In order to have this characteristic, a team must ask itself: What are we on this team to accomplish? What’s our purpose for being a team? What’s the goal that we have to achieve? What does that goal have to look like in order to say we achieved it? How are we going to achieve it?
   
   In order to achieve results, a team must understand and accept the goal they’re working toward, and get there by doing regular reviews, evaluating how things are going and how each team member is doing. To keep up morale, teams should also celebrate progress toward the results.
   
   
2. Commitment—This means everyone on the team not only understands the goal, but is also committed to achieving it. This includes committing time and attention to what it will take to help the team achieve those results. To support commitment, there may be some ground rules about how the team operates, such as: How do we handle disagreement in process or tools? How do we make decisions? Is it a majority vote? Is it a consensus? If we can’t all come to an agreement, does the team leader have final say?
   
   Also, because everyone will be seeing things from a slightly different perspective, it’s important to share what’s going on with each team member’s part of the project. This helps keep everyone committed to the goal.
   
   
3. Process—Creating a process for getting things done will make everything go a lot smoother. Questions that need to be answered in order to create a process include: Who does what? What role does each person have? What is each team member accountable for? How is the project going to get done? How should each person share their knowledge? How should everyone share the information that’s pertinent to the project? How is the team going to document the progress of the project, especially if the project is going to be an annual occurrence?
   
   When documenting the progress, you’ll want to figure out: How are meetings going to be conducted? Who’s going to chair them? Will there be an agenda? What kinds of items have to be scheduled? Should the team meet face-to-face or are virtual meetings OK? Do all team members need to be at all meetings?
   
   All of these processes will help the team figure out how to stay committed to the project and achieve results. Everyone also needs to be committed to the processes and improving the processes as new insights are discovered along the way.

In my next Insight, I’ll detail the final two characteristics of high team performance and also include some commonly made mistakes. 

As I mentioned in my previous Insight, good listening skills are very important in the workplace. The bad news is, most people don’t have them. The good news is, good listening skills can be learned.

Learning Good Listening Skills
Here are three easy ways to learn good listening skills.

1. Find a role model. Do you know someone who’s a good listener? If you do, pay attention to what they do and how they interact with others while listening. Ask yourself:

• What are they doing that lets me know they are a good listener?
• What does it feel like when I’m being listened to?
• How can I utilize their skills?

2. Get into their “movie.” In her book, The Zen of Listening: Mindful Communication in the Age of Distraction, Rebecca Z. Shafir recommends a technique she calls, “getting into a person’s movie.” This is a really great individual learning activity.

When we go to the movies, there are lots of distractions—the popcorn stand with all the snacks, advertisements for other movies, people getting into their seats, etc. But then the lights go down, it gets dark, the movie comes on, and our attention is completely on the screen.

And what happens during the time while the movie is on is amazing. Often we get so engrossed in the movie and the characters that we forget everything else. We become one of the characters and really get into the action.

Then the movie is over, the lights come back on, and we start talking and interpreting what we just saw.

This same technique can apply to listening.

If you eliminate all distractions around you (“turning the lights down at the movies”), then you can listen and suspend your disbelief (“while the movie is playing”) and once the person is finished talking (“when the movie ends”), then you can start to analyze or clarify what they said and take action on it.

3. Become a “listening spy.” From your own observations, you can learn how to become a better listener. The next time you’re in a restaurant or coffee shop, watch what’s happening as other people have their conversations.

• Notice if they interrupt each other and how the other person reacts.
• What’s going on with those conversations that indicate to you that people are effective or ineffective listeners?
• Do the people listen well enough to understand what the message was and to carry on the conversation? Or did they completely miss the point and go off into left field?

Good listening skills are a necessity in the workplace (and in life in general). We can all improve our ability to listen to others. Try the techniques I’ve described and listen to what happens!

For Example
An Operations Director at an equipment installation company was on the road a lot driving between customer sites. While on the road he often received phone calls from customers asking technical questions that required his attention. He found he was having a hard time listening to and answering those customers’ concerns while, at the same time, paying attention to his driving.

After taking a class on listening skills, he determined that if he reduced or eliminated the distractions, he would be able to listen better and to respond more effectively when his customers called. Now, when he’s on the road or at a place where he can’t give the customer his undivided attention, he asks to give the customer a call back. Not only has he found that his listening skills have improved, but he’s also a safer driver!

Imagine for a second that you’re talking with one of your employees about a new assignment. You give them specific directions and a deadline for when the assignment needs to be completed. Your employee nods, says “OK” and walks away to go get the job done.

The next thing you know, the deadline hits and the employee doesn’t have the work done. They misinterpreted what you said and thought it was due a week from the day it was actually due. Now you’re in a jam because two other employees were relying on this employee to get the project finished on time.

Or maybe the employee does turn the assignment in on time, but it’s not what was expected of them.

Sound familiar? Poor listening can lead to many problems in the workplace, including:

• Dissatisfied customers
• Missed deadlines
• Poor morale among coworkers
• Assignments completed incorrectly

Good communication in the workplace is one of the most important skills. And the basis of good communication is good listening skills. In fact, the two go hand-in-hand; you really can’t have one without the other.

What Are Good Listening Skills?
Being a good listener isn’t very hard, it just requires you to pay attention to what’s being said and make sure you understood what you heard. 

One of the things I’ve learned during my career is that “Communication is a matter of what’s heard rather than what is said.” And I absolutely agree with this because it’s easy for things to be misinterpreted. 

Here are two techniques for developing good listening skills: 

• Concentrate on the Person Speaking—In order to do this, you need to eliminate all distractions around you. There are two kinds of distractions, internal distractions—such as the voice in your head that’s saying “Oh goodness, I need to pick up my kids and take them to soccer practice and I need to stop at the grocery store and, oh, I forgot to call back my client; I need to do that as well”—and external distractions—such as someone walking by your desk.
  
  Some people are very good at blocking out distractions, but for those who aren’t, you can help avoid distractions by simply closing an office door or stepping into a conference room. Or you might say, “I’m sorry, this isn’t a good time, can we set up another time to talk?” when you’re too busy to really listen well.
  
  
• Be a Good Interpreter—Have you ever been in a situation where you’ve said (or someone has said to you), “You never listen to me,” or “That’s not what I said?” Good listeners hear the message and interpret it correctly, even if the messenger is not really skilled at delivering the message. To be a good interpreter, you can summarize what you heard and check with the speaker to be sure you heard correctly. Asking questions or getting clarification also helps you interpret the message more accurately.
  
  For example, you could clarify something that was just said to you by asking: “Did you mean this Tuesday or a week from Tuesday?”

In my next Insight, I’ll explain how to be a better listener and how you can train employees to have good listening skills as well.

All business owners and managers want to have effective team communication at their company, but many don’t know how to do it or what, exactly, is needed.

Here are two examples of organizations I’ve worked with. 

Example 1: The leadership team for a non-profit advocacy group held weekly meetings where the focus of communication was giving status reports. Sadly, this turned into each manager reporting, “How great my department is,” and “What a wonderful job I’m doing as the leader of this department.” Basically, it became a bragging session as opposed to a productive team meeting. 

I facilitated improvement discussions with the leadership team to help them first, identify the key initiatives they needed to focus on that supported the organization’s mission, and second, the types of information that were key to achieving those initiatives.

The team decided to change their meeting agenda and change the topics and the items that would be communicated within that meeting. For them, effective team communication was about focusing on problems that had to be solved as an organization in order for them to continue to move forward on their mission. 

Example 2: The challenge for a research team supporting federal government contractors in the Washington, D.C. area was getting everyone’s views heard. Some people tended to hold passionately to their own approach and were resistant to the different points of view being shared by other team members. Others held back, concerned that their ideas or thoughts would be shot down. The team’s meetings often broke down into very emotional arguments and personal attacks. 

In working with this team I asked them to define, “What does effective team communication look like?” They determined that everybody’s viewpoints had to be heard and also understood because one person’s perspective of another’s viewpoint could be very different than what that person actually intended. We explored the importance of focusing on the facts and not the personal biases they might have or the assumptions they might make about each other’s viewpoints.

To support effective team communication, they created a set of ground rules that they would follow at all team meetings. 

Steps to Effective Team Communication
Here are steps you can take to have more effective team communication: 

1. Define the Team’s Purpose—For each team involved you need to ask, What is this team expected to accomplish? What goals do they need to focus on? How does the team support the organization’s goals? One of the tools that I found helpful is a purpose statement that explains why the team exists and how it operates.
   
2. Figure Out the Resources and Information Needed—What kinds of information does the team need in order to achieve its purpose? Who needs to gather each piece of the information? Who’s going to be responsible for sharing and disseminating that information? How will it be shared? Some teams prefer to use technology, such as internal blogs and electronic bulletin boards. Other teams find that face-to-face contact or meeting on-site works better for them to make sure nothing is misinterpreted. You need to figure out what works best for your team and apply it.
    
3. Establish Ground Rules—This sounds basic, but the simple things can really get in the way of effective team communication. So within ground rules, it’s important to figure out: 

For example, one team decided that a meeting agenda would be sent out 24 hours before all meetings so everyone could come prepared. This really helped increase their team’s efficiency because information was communicated in a timely way.

"It is teamwork that remains the competitive advantage, both because it is so powerful and so rare."
                                                                                    —— Patrick Lencioni

In my work, I strive to strengthen and fortify effective team communication. I agree with points made by Patrick Lencioni in his book, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable.

Lencioni believes that because teams are made up of imperfect human beings, they have a tendency to perform in dysfunctional ways. However, he also supports techniques for modifying human behaviors in ways that help individuals perform as a strong and powerful team.

How many times have you led or attended a team meeting where action items were discussed?

You walk away from the meeting thinking, "Okay, that was a good meeting, and we all agreed to handling ’x, y and z’ as action items." Then, "sure as shootin’," you reconvene with the team and no one remembers the action items or they thought someone else was handling them!

If you want effective team communication and effective team meetings, I have two valuable techniques to share from Lencioni’s book that have helped me:

1. End-of-meeting team closer: Whether meeting by phone or in person, ask each meeting attendee to confirm their action item(s). They should also confirm the due date for any action item(s); and what to expect when items are delivered. For team members who have no action item, they should confirm that status. This process allows for clarification and further discussion if the action items are not understood by the team. This strategy gives clarity around communication, and it works very well as teams move forward without wasting time.
2. Cascading communication: This is a really useful technique for sharing meeting information with people who are not in the meeting room but who need to know what was discussed, accomplished, or decided. For example, the management team may have made a decision about its operations that will affect the entire organization. Using the "cascading communication" process, the meeting participants identify the message(s) they are going to share with others—within the next 24 to 48 hours.

However, how many times have we heard varying or completely different messages? For example, my manager might share information with me—then, I walk down the hall and talk with Joe. His manager, Roy, was in the same meeting but Joe ends up hearing something different than I heard.

With "cascading communication," you want to eliminate different messages going out to other affected employees. This process helps keep everyone "on the same page." Receivers of the message are also allowed opportunities to ask questions to make sure there is really clarity. By keeping communication uniform throughout the organization, you can minimize or hopefully eliminate misunderstandings, rumors and message misinterpretations.

The key to improving effective team communication, which ultimately has the power to increase your competitive advantage, is putting these two valuable methods into practice—day after day, meeting after meeting.

As Lencioni says, "Success comes only for those groups that overcome the all-too-human behavioral tendencies that corrupt teams and breed dysfunctional politics within them." I know it is possible because I’ve seen these techniques work for me and my teams.